N.E.R.D.S. Ramble 220 – 22nd Nov.2007.
The Old Gits on buses Ramble.
Those Present – Sandyballs, Matt, Froggy, Bronco, B.T., Lafayette.
It was the aftermath to Graham Boiling’s funeral – A TN3 Inspector whose charisma had profoundly influenced most of the Nerds’ early immigration careers. So much so that only Matt, in the mistaken belief that G.B. had been a Catholic and somehow influential in the Afterlife, had been to make sure he was really buried. The rest of the Nerds couldn’t be bothered in the sure and certain knowledge that when we each died nobody would attend unless a substantial amount of free drink was offered as an inducement.
So a meeting was convened around chez Lafayette (with a substantial amount of free drink as an inducement) as a prelude to that day’s ramble. Matt waxed lyrical about how his great hero should have been canonized while the rest of the guests scrapped over the chocolate biscuits and rolled around the floor fighting for the last drop of delicious brandy. In the end Matt gave up and started to tell us what a marvelous body his other hero, Ronny (Schwarzenegger) Rebeiro had got.
Enough of this futile idolatry, we had a ramble to get underway. Routemeister Sandyballs, switched off the porn films, beat everyone over the head with an (empty) bottle and forced them out to the nearest bus stop. There was a certain amount of jealousy in the air about the fact that both Lafayette and Matt had schoolboy bus passes enabling them to travel free. Such are the rewards of a long life full of virtue and honesty. Everyone else grumbled, paid their fare and migrated to the top deck to hold loud, drunken conversations and look forward to seeing the schoolgirls at Rodean where we were due to alight.
Sadly all the school girls were all off that day on field trips practicing to be expensive courtesans, so we missed them. Sandy balls had decided on a nifty strategy of getting off the bus within sight of the lunch destination and herding us all back along a concrete, coastal road where we were constantly menaced by women with vicious dogs and boulders tumbling from the cliff top. However, in his favour, Sandyballs had picked a gloriously sunny day when the twinkling of the waves on the sea made us all nostalgic for the days of being proper crossing officers when to do the job properly, uniforms were banned and alcohol was compulsory.
Fighting down the nostalgia we lurched into Rottingdean where Froggy’s internet researches had formed a cunning plan. This involved going to the furthest pub away possible, but which served Harvey’s and was a recruiting ground for the French Foreign Legion. You see Froggy had had such a marvelous time as a young squaddie in a previous existence that he had constantly harboured the secret desire to join up again and fight for his adopted country. The rest of the Nerds thought such ambition wholly misplaced and were already making plans to avoid conscription on age grounds, if not health and safety concerns.
B.T. as official photographer, made us all sit under an apple tree on a bench and grin dementedly at the camera. Whoever sees these works of art he produces on the blog will all be struck by the amazingly handsome features of his models. We now felt so confident of our charms that we set off again in search of any trainee schoolgirl courtesans to wow them with our money. Bet they were all dying to meet us!
After making a diversion all round the village to avoid the French military recruiting agents we all ended up about 50 yards from the previous apple tree in The Plough.
This turned out to be a good pub with no Old Trouts, good service and a room all to ourselves (I wonder why?). After a not bad dinner plus lots of Harvey’s we got down to the serious business of the day – would B.T. be allowed to take Lafayette’s bus pass back to the Forgery Room and substitute his own photo. Bad luck, B.T., nobody will believe your monstrous claim to be 60 after all the lies you’ve put out over the years about your tender age.
More important, wot about the Christmas ramble? Sandyballs had devised a route and organized a mystery guest but wanted to do a dummy run to ensure we didn’t get lost
(hollow laughter). Everyone wanted to join in on the dummy run, even Bronco who said he would like to drive to the pub and be the mystery guest. However it was pointed out that this might actually defeat the object of doing the Christmas ramble on the decided date and having a mystery guest whose identity was supposed to be a secret (think about it!)
Nextly we discounted the 20th year ramble next summer as taking place in Marrakesh, Machu Pichu, the North Pole or Tierra del Fuego as being a teensy weensy bit too difficult to organize, and settled on Dublin again because it was 1) easy to get ramble around if it pissed down with rain (possible) 2) full of good looking foreign women, some of whom might even be Irish , and 3) dead cheap to get to on Ryan Air (& such good gin and tonics).
On the way back on the bus Lafayette was seen to be grooming a pretty school boy for later stardom. B.T . was immediately jealous, feeling he had been displaced as Lafayette’s no.1 catamite but Lafayette said that since BT now claimed to be 60 (see bus pass fraud) he was now too old to be of any further benefit and should accept his sacking gracefully.
Back to The Bridge at Newhaven where we ran into Donna of the face transplant –(Not literally ran into her, that was the Admiral after a heavy day drinking down The Engineer; now he’s got to pay blood money to Bob to buy a new barmaid, silly boy!) and so to bed.
Next ramble is the one where Bronco’s going to be Mystery Guest so try to guess who it’s really going to be. Love to you all - from Lafayette.
